Saturday, January 28 2006 19:11 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Bhubaneswar: In a rebuff to the State Government on its handling of the Kalinga nagar incident, six opposition political parties in Orissa today (Jan 28,2006) boycotted the meeting convened by the group of ministers to discuss the issue of Resettlement and Rehabilitation policy.

While the Congress had yesterday (Jan 27,2006) said that it would not attend the meeting in view of the Government's failure to set up an all party committee to discuss the issue, five other parties today informed the government that they would not be a party to the review of the policy which had been formulated without their being consulted.

In a joint letter to the Revenue secretary, leaders of the five parties said they had been invited to the meeting to review the resettlement and rehabilitation policy by a group of ministers as invited guests.

This is for the first time that the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Coalition Government headed by Naveen Patnaik preferred to associate opposition political parties in a policy matter discussion, they wrote adding this meeting had been convened in the backdrop of the Kalinga nagar incident of January 2 in which 12 tribals were killed.

"It would have been admirable had the Government consulted political parties before the formulation of the R and R policy not in the aftermath of Kalinga nagar. We don't share opinion with a killer government on this issue, "they said.

The signatories to the letter were OGP president Bijoy Mohapatra, CPI assitant secretary Dibakar Nayak, CPI(M) state secretariate member Santosh Das, JMM MLA Prahallad Purty and Janata Dal (JD)Secular(S) state secretary Krushna Chandra Patra.